'Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable' : Sakini, in "The Tea House of the August Moon" by John Patrick, (1953)

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Vera Tollmann - The Terror of Positivity. An Interview with the Philosopher and Media Theorist Byung-Chul Han

The Terror of Positivity

An Interview with the Philosopher and Media Theorist
Byung-Chul Han

Vera Tollmann"... A while ago, Burger King launched its »Whopper Sacrifice« project. If you delete ten friends on Facebook, you get a free Whopper. The friends are notified that they were sacrificed for a Whopper. A friendship on Facebook seems to be worth as much as a few grams of ground meat..."

No one can honestly say they have an overview over the
extent of the global data mountains in the internet. During the early years of
the internet, cyber culture was still alive with futuristic ideas. Today, the
mood on the World Wide Web is far more pragmatic and obsessed with the present.
Users are driven by market share, self-marketing and other techniques of the
self. The private domain, not the political one, is public. A handful of top
firms like Apple, Facebook, Google and Weibo try to bond customers to their
self-contained systems. What is the community feeling in a close digital world?
Invisible algorithms steer personalized search results and generate advertisements.
A few well-networked hackers prevail in the face of the mainstream and
copyrights.

Increasingly, the internet appears to be regulated as a digital desk with
attached film and TV archives, department stores, cafés and a communication
terminal. Once one social network has been installed, people are reluctant to
start all over again with another one. People who want to use the most recent
social network, Google+, have to register under their real name; firms want
consumers and not blogging activists, and least of all ephemeral avatar
creatures.

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han has come up with refreshing explanation models
for this change from optimistic elation to pragmatic user interests. In his
2006 book »Hyperkulturalität«1 (Hyperculturality), Han describes how culture
changes under global conditions. Different times and continuities exist
side-by-side in hyperculture – which is why Han calls his global terrain a
»mosaic universe.« Friendliness is the basis of hyperculturality. »Its very lack
of rules enables a widespread impact. It creates a maximum in solidarity with a
minimum of interrelation. Where the shared horizon unravels in a multiplicity
of different identities and ideas, it engenders a singular involvement, a
continuum of discontinuities.«2 »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft« (Tiredness Society) 3
was published this past summer, a surprise hit that the very society it
analyzes welcomed as a fitting diagnosis. While the creative game with fictive
identities was described as hyperculture, »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft« is the
result of the weary society’s »surplus of positivity.« That’s why there was so
little energy! This positivity »inhabits the negativity-free space of the same,
where there is no polarization of friend versus foe, inside versus outside, or
what is personal versus what is foreign.«4 This is where his most recent book
picks up: »Die Topologie der Gewalt« (The Topology of Violence)5, which is
about transparency as an effect of the economic process.

In digital forums, it was netiquette that ennobled the discourse with a few
commonly accepted rules; social networks, on the other hand, try to prevent
negative statements of any kind by providing only narrow windows for
interaction. No less than five million users are after all in favor of a »dislike«
button on Facebook. Compared with the 750 million members, that is a negligible
figure. Can friendliness still be relevant in such a context? And what about
the non-material value of friendship?

Vera Tollmann: In your 2006 book »Hyperkulturalität,« you
characterized hyperculture using internet-specific terms such as links and
networking. When you say hyperspace, do you mean the internet, or is
hyperculture evident elsewhere as well?

Byung-Chul Han: Hyperspace is a completely hybrid and promiscuous
space where everything is intermingled and networked with everything else, a
space where cultural and territorial markers have been deleted, a space marked
by a total lack of distance. Hyperculturality is hence different from inter-
and multiculturality, which is still infused with the negativity of cultural
tensions, and varies as well as from transculturality, which still preserves
cultural markers and spatial scope. Of course, the internet certainly has
elements of hyperspace and speeds up global hyperculturization. Culture in a
classic sense disappears in what is, so to speak, more cultural than culture,
namely in hyperculture and in reality: as Baudrillard would put it, it
disappears in what is more real than real, namely in hyper-reality.

Tollmann: The sociologist Aras Özgün once compared the dominance of
the social networks to Haussmann’s modernization of 19th-century Paris: the
social networks, he says, are the grand boulevards of the internet. Do the
social networks also make up the architecture of hyperculture, or do you see
other organizational forms in the Net?

Han: The term »boulevard« comes from »bolwerc,« that is bulwark,
originally part of a fort fortified by ramparts and trenches. Paris boulevards
actually do resemble these bulwarks. The network is no bulwark, however. A
rhizome would be a more fitting metaphor for a network. On the other hand,
social networks are not as open and uncontrollable as rhizomes. They form
instead an electronic panopticon. The internet is not merely a space that
grants freedom; it is in itself a panopticon that enables total control. It
offers up all its users either to a voyeuristic gaze from the outside or to
capitalist exploitation. Contrary to the panopticon in a disciplinary society,
however, control is not achieved by isolation but by interconnection. Confined
inmates make way for free users – or at least users who believe they are free.
But both are at the mercy of the panoptic gaze.

Tollmann: Which notion of freedom does the internet stand for? Is
it »freedom of choice« – the neo-liberal formula?

Han: Freedom is manifest as excessive dislimitation, as exposure
that goes as far as pornographic nudity, as an orgy of communication,
information and production. But what is interesting is that this freedom is
turning into its original opposite. In »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft,« I pointed out
that freedom is turning into the violence of self-exploitation. The freedom of
dislimitation and disinhibition spawns obscenity. A world without narration,
rituals or scenes is obscene. A world that no longer needs a scenography is
pornographic.

Tollmann: You write that »friendliness is capable of the kind of
›windowing‹ that opens and connects« different cultures. »Windowing« is what
you call the »hypertextual mode of experience,« where everyone »mirrors the
other or lets others become apparent in the self «.6 »Friendship« is a concept
that is overtaxed in social networks. Would you say that what they call
friendship is what you call friendliness?

Han: A while ago, Burger King launched its »Whopper Sacrifice«
project. If you delete ten friends on Facebook, you get a free Whopper. The
friends are notified that they were sacrificed for a Whopper. A friendship on
Facebook seems to be worth as much as a few grams of ground meat.
Neo-liberalism has turned even individuals into micro-entrepreneurs who only
enter into business deals that promise a profit. Friendship is no exception: it
is likewise expected to be profitable. A friend, according to Aristotle, is a
second self. Today, a friend is a product. And you can’t idealize Facebook as a
friendly space; it is, after all, a space where unscrupulous bullying takes
place. And from an economic point of view, Facebook is a space of exploitation.

Tollmann: What product is traded among friends? Is it information
or attention? And what would the profit be: the symbolic capital?

Han: »Friends« would be customers and new friends would be new
customers. They strengthen the narcissistic sensation of the ego. The internet
is a space where above all you encounter yourself. The other person is long
gone. Depression is a disease of the narcissistic self that has been set adrift
from relationships, that has lost all sense of what is different. The virtual
space is a hell of sameness.

Tollmann: If you look at »Hyperkulturalität« today: was your vision
of the future too optimistic? And should we regard »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft« –
published five years later – as a sobering present-day analysis of this future?

Han: The book »Hyperkulturalität« ends with a question mark, or
rather, a Handke quote: »If you feel the pain of the threshold, you’re not a
tourist and a transition is possible.« The book »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft« also
ends with a chapter about Handke’s »Versuch über die Müdigkeit« (Essay on
Tiredness). But it’s true: the appearance that underlies »Hyperkulturalität« is
intentionally naive.

Tollmann: Is hyperculture a prerequisite for the tiredness society?
Is it what triggered what you’ve analyzed as a »surplus of positivity«?

Han: Hyperculture is a culture without thresholds. Today, we really
no longer feel the » pain of thresholds.« Total mobility and promiscuity even
let the »transition« in an emphatic sense disappear. The present society breaks
down any negativity. The threshold is a kind of negativity. When all
thresholds, differentiations and borders are broken down, the result is a general
proliferation and obesity of circuits, a hyperinformation, hypercommunication
and hyperproduction. The »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft« takes the last sentence in
»Hyperkulturalität« a step further, but with a new look.

Tollmann: On Facebook, it is only possible to show you agree with
something, by clicking on the »like« button, which has no negative counterpart.
How does this lack of negativity and criticism affect society and how it
communicates?

Han: Where something totally different exists, shock or anger are
not just a possibility: they become a necessity. Current society is dominated
by a surplus of positivity, even in one’s own affective household. It seems
negative feelings are an impediment to accelerating the process. The utmost in
acceleration can be expected where the same answers to the same. Negativity
slows down and prevents a chain reaction of sameness.

Tollmann: »The Far East has a very ›natural relationship‹ with
›technical‹ networking.«7 What do you mean by that? Is the West’s relationship
with »technical« networking estranged?

Han: The Far East doesn’t have a culture of identity that people
might feel is threatened by networking. There is much more networking: take,
for instance, online games. It would appear that Asians feel more comfortable
in the internet than Europeans. There is much less criticism concerning
internet culture. Perhaps the Buddhist notion of reincarnation implies a
general interconnection of living beings. The Chinese philosopher Laozi says:
the skilful traveler leaves no traces. Traveling in the virtual space might
correspond to this ideal …

Tollmann: But users do leave traces: their data. There is quite a
discussion going on about how much influence users have on how this data is
used. It is difficult to imagine what might come after user-specific ads.

Han: »The skilful traveler leaves no traces« would have fit in
»Hyperkulturalität.« It’s true. Users leave traces. They become inmates in the
electronic panopticon. What’s interesting is that you feel free in the panopticon.

Tollmann: You write: »The globalization process, accelerated by new
technologies, creates a distance to the cultural space. The closeness that is
created in turn produces an abundance, a pool of cultural life practices and
forms of expression.«8 Does hyperculturality overcome the differences between
West and East because the West must deconstruct its cultural idiosyncrasies
such as narration, persona and identity via hyperculturality?

Han: Cultural hyperspace doesn’t have a West or an East. In fact,
hyperculturality proclaims the disappearance of space and time. Today, we live
in the here and now. In the meantime, even the distance that was apparent in
the old Microsoft motto »Where do you want to go today?« is disappearing. We
live in times of a complete lack of spatial or temporal intervals, times
without distance and without discretion.

Tollmann: In »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft,« you refer to Melville’s
Bartleby as an archaic role model for opposition to the disciplinarian society.
In today’s achievement-oriented society, which has driven the individual to the
point where he exploits himself, »I prefer not to« no longer functions as a
formula for refusal. Does that mean that there can no longer be an effective
form of refusal?

Han: As a matter of fact, refusal is only possible in connection
with outside coercion that I can decline. Exploitation of the self is much more
fatal than exploitation from the outside, because it is linked to a feeling of
freedom. At the same time, it is more efficient and productive than
exploitation from the outside, because by choice, you exploit yourself until
you break down. That appears to be the deceit of the system. Today, we don’t
have a ruler or sovereign whom we could oppose by saying No. We are subject to
a systemic compulsion, a systemic power that forces, even entices, the
achieving subject to exploit itself. Stéphane Hessel’s »Empört Euch« (Be
Outraged) alone doesn’t help much in this regard. The deceit inherent in the
system is that it makes the very thing one could revolt against disappear. It
is very difficult to be up in arms if every perpetrator and victim is at the
same time the exploiter and the exploitee.

Tollmann: Wouldn’t the loss of unprofitable interest as a key trait
of friendship be a reason to be outraged? Or will completely new social
relationships evolve along with the digital ways of life?

Han: Sociology and the cultural sciences have the important task of
describing the new forms of relationships that have evolved thanks to digital
media. The total lack of distance produced by digital media, for instance,
allows for the emergence of a new form of love that may no longer be love, a
love that lacks all distance, all longing, all barriers, a love that knows no
history or fatefulness. A love that no longer unfolds lyrical powers. The
surplus of positivity creates total non-commitment, ties without any real
contact … Actually, love is a phenomenon of negativity. Maybe that’s for the
best … One shouldn’t compare the different forms of relationships and play them
off against each other. Instead of love, we now happen to have the »like«
button, which lacks all fatefulness.

Tollmann: At the end of »Müdigkeitsgesellschaft,« you refer to
positive forms of tiredness. According to Handke, fundamental tiredness enables
»serene inactivity.« You see this state as being excluded from active society.
At the same time, you say tiredness makes a »society imaginable that needs
neither affiliation nor relation.«9 Handke uses a Dutch still life to
illustrate this state. Where do you see these forms of society today?

Han: The Handke quote I refer to reads: »I have an image for the
›all in one‹: those 17th-century, for the most part Dutch, floral still lifes,
in which a beetle, a snail, a bee or a butterfly sits true to life in the
flowers, and although none of these may suspect the presence of the others,
they are all there together at the moment, my moment.« What I have in mind is a
utopian society, a society of friendliness that can make do without relatives
or a common affiliation. This friendliness only awakens in the face of the
other, the stranger. The bigger the difference is to the self, the more
friendliness is bestowed on the other. Friendliness toward the same is not
possible.

Byung-Chul Han tends to write sparse, »bony« books in protest against a surplus
of facts and information. The booklet »Shanzhai. Dekonstruktion auf Chinesisch«
(Merve Verlag Berlin) was published in spring 2011. Shanzhai is a cultural
technique that openly plays games with original works. The copy is no longer a
secret. Han has never visited China; a dialectically-thinking theorist, he
describes a certain problem and, for lack of a better word, calls it China.
Raised in South Korea, he studied philosophy, German language and literature,
and Catholic theology in Munich and Freiburg.